Friday, March 30, 2012

Happy Friday! We have a bonanza of links from others this week, so let’s get to it straight away.




From Julie: Want to be part of a record-setting attempt? All you have to do is play miniature golf for an hour. In Essex. Naked.



Also from Julie: The Thai cookbook Cooking with Poo wins the award for oddest title of the year!



From Bunny: An 86-year-old gymnast performs a floor routine and a parallel bars routine. Wow.



Also from Bunny: a conversation between two birds (see if you can figure out what they’re saying); the creativity of medieval marginalia; and a study linking creativity with dishonesty. This is why kids with vivid imaginations get in so much trouble!



From my mom: DeadSoci.al, for managing your online presence after you go permanently offline.



From Satori: a plaque in New York honoring Nikolai Tesla!



From Cassandra: questions about the formation of the moon, and a study of body language among ethnic types.



Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you next week.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

InfoDocket has some great links, including the news that the library Harry Potter ebooks go live at noon today!




Also from InfoDocket: a look at the New York Times’ four-part series on the perilous situation of India’s National Archives.



Casanova was a librarian, you know. And now, his personal memoirs are safe in a library!



What does a 21st-century library look like? Well, um, that’s a good question.



Super researcher Bill Lucey looks back at ten years of the U.S.-Afghanistan conflict.



The Library of Congress lists events for the Cherry Blossom exhibition. It's beautiful AND educational!


Yale University is putting Facebook’s timeline concept to good use – you can track their history back to the 1700s!

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Having a stressful day? I can’t recommend PenguinCam highly enough. Watch it through April, until they turn off the lights to mimic the Antarctic winter!




The penguins would probably appreciate Finland’s snowball fighting championships, held this weekend.



In America, the celebration of Mule Day begins tomorrow and goes on all weekend, with bluegrass and lots of mules.



One description of the friendship between Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini compares the two to Mulder and Scully, respectively. I like that. Someone should make a series based on the concept.



Artificial underground caves are proliferating! (See, Houdini and Doyle could investigate, and Houdini could perform an escape in a cave…)



And finally, if you’ve missed Meet Cleaver Theatre, here’s a treat: Butch R. Cleaver himself is hosting a limited-run weekly series over at PandoraCon’s site. Go and see!

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

The London Underground, home of a million stories, is turning 150 this season. Many events are underway, including steam engines!




And for the history buff, you can see photos and drawings at Network Rail’s virtual archive.



Meanwhile, over in America, dirigibles are taking over the Library of Congress! Watch the skies…or ceilings, as it may be.



Tjep makes, among other works of art, incredibly intricate clockwork jewelry.



Why did huge mechanical mosquitoes never lead us to the South Pole? Someone should go back in time and fix this sad non-development!

Monday, March 26, 2012

This month marks the 75th anniversary of H.P. Lovecraft’s death, and there are all sorts of interweb writings on it.




It’s also ninety years, more or less, since the invention of the theremin. Wooooeeeeeeeoooooo!



Do you have your own Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies at home? Whether or not you do, this site should prove nostalgic.



Meanwhile, here’s modern art in Rome. Sort of. Hee.



And I haven’t been watching Downton Abbey, but I love these paper dolls based on the characters…especially the different expression for Maggie Smith’s character!

Friday, March 23, 2012

Happy Friday! Would you believe I have NO links from others to share? I don't even have any links in reserve, other than the recently-discovered Archdruid Report, which examines the current state of the economy and world issues. So I am opening up the comment section -- feel free to post links, comments, or anything else you'd like to say! The word verification is temporarily off, to make it easier (although spam will be annihilated as per usual).

Have a spiffy weekend! See you Monday.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

What does a librarian look like? Here, see for yourself!




You can also view librarians on strike in Toronto at the moment.



And while SXSW is over, you can read a recap of all the library-related shenanigans which went on there!



Archivists are getting excited over next week’s release of the 1940 census (yay, more data!).



Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, the Espresso Book Machine has arrived to provide print-on-demand books. How cool is that?

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

It’s not too late to celebrate the spring equinox by…burning your socks! Yes, that’s what they do in Annapolis. Crazy sailors.




This weekend also brings the annual World Pooh Sticks Championship across the pond. I will attend this  event one year. (I grew up next to a bridge. We did this kind of stuff a lot!)



How do you commemorate the closing of a mental health center after nearly a hundred years of operation? One artist answered with flowers.



There are strange noises in Wisconsin. Underground facilities? Fracking damage? The Old Ones coming back to life?



If the last answer is true, it might be good to start the Zombie Run Game, just to make sure you’re in shape for outrunning whatever happens.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Alan Turing would be 100 years old this year, and Nature has devoted an issue to him and his work.




Washington state hosts the Victorian Festival this weekend! Go and be entertained!



If you can’t make it to any festivals, you could ponder strategies for battling an armed, steampunk George Washington. Yes, really.



Victorian Gothic examines the strange paintings of Arthur Boyd Houghton.



Retronaut, meanwhile, shows some slides of a fairground circa 1900. (Scary clown/gorilla suit person included.)



And lastly, please watch this brilliant version of “Bad Romance” focusing on women’s suffrage!

Monday, March 19, 2012

Pssst! Hey, buddy! Wanna buy some movie posters? There’s quite a lot of them…




If you're not in the market for posters, how about a coffeepot for masochists? Much more from Jacques Carelman is displayed at Impossible Objects.



Yarn bombers strike in San Diego! Is no one safe from their relentless cheer? (Hee.)



Barbara Tuchman, one of my favorite historians, opted out of an academic career early on and never looked back.



And finally: Classic movie actors screw up lines, too!

Friday, March 16, 2012

Happy Friday! Sorry for missing yesterday; we shall move on and celebrate today’s links from others.




From Julie: Forget finding Jesus in potato chips; someone has found the face of E.T. on a log.



From Julie and a few others: the Encyclopedia Britannica is cancelling its print run and going exclusively online. It’s the end of an era!



From Zazoo: “Agent Scully admits she has had affairs with women! It's the XX (chromosome) Files...”



From Cassandra: A small slice of life story about having Kurt Vonnegut as a neighbor.



Found online: the best Reddit thread in a long time – an extraordinary man with an extraordinary list!



Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you Monday.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Happy Pi Day! Celebrate with math and pie.




This weekend will bring many a St. Patrick’s Day Parade, but if you’re not into the Irish festivities…what’s wrong with you? Kidding. The Netherlands is home to Stille Omgang (Silent Walk) on the 17th, and in Greece, the Screamin’ Athens Horror Film Festival gets underway! (Special note to Bunny: the schedule for 12:30 am on the 18th lists “Bohren Und Der Club of Gore Live!” Envious?)

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Spring seems to have arrived here already, which means another steampunk book giveaway cannot be far away! Stay tuned for the fun!




Did you know the Smithsonian has a weblog dedicated to the future that never was? They do, and it’s incredible. Steampunky tinkerer types will love “The iPad of 1935,” while Generation Xers will love this collection of 1970s kids’ drawings visualizing the year 2076. (We’re kind of a weird generation.)



The first steampunk bedtime story? Perhaps! (Those of us who grew up hearing Jules Verne at bedtime may disagree.)



This wacky film of “boarding school girls” (?) visiting Coney Island in 1905 is lovely for its retro goodness, but what’s really fascinating are the rides.



For the neovictorian audiophile, Instructables presents the Traveling Steampunk DJ Cabinet.



Via Kate Beaton’s Tumblr, take a gander at the great names of New York gangs in the 1920s. The Warriors of the 1970s had nothing on these fellows. (Well, maybe the Baseball Furies. Maybe.)

Monday, March 12, 2012

Hope for the Flowers has a chance to be made into an animated movie. Would you like to help? (Disclaimer: I know Trina, and this is near and dear to my heart, so I hope it succeeds! I didn’t know she’d turned down Disney in the past. Wow.)




Behold, a book barge!



The Visual Thesaurus has a continuing series, Word Routes, which is wonderful for linguistics lovers.



F. Scott Fitzgerald broke with polite society by publishing the “Crack-Up” essays. In a way, Chris Arnade does the same with his riveting “Faces of Addiction” photo series and stories – he shows you the beauty and dignity inherent in what we so often want to overlook or ignore.

Friday, March 09, 2012

Happy Friday! To the links from others! Many thanks to everyone who reads/sends in links/makes this little corner of the interweb a fun place.




From Julie: prosthetic limbs through the ages! Also from Julie: the earliest film yet which features a character from Charles Dickens has been found. Also, a headline I’m just going to repeat here: “A Bronze Age gold ring found in a Hampshire field is declared as treasure by a coroner.” (?)



From Cassandra: Ziggy Stardust, immortalized here on Earth. Hooray!



From Scott: Hidden Treasure celebrates the 175th birthday of the National Library of Medicine. Ooooh, ahhh.



From Chuck via Cassandra: The Oreo cookie is 100 years old! (The brand, that is, not a specific Oreo cookie. That would be kind of disgusting.)



From Zazoo: There’s going to be another Muppets movie! Yay! (Arms flailing wildly)



Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you Monday.

Thursday, March 08, 2012

Happy International Women’s Day! It’s an interesting time for women right now, that’s for sure.




Libraries are taking on Random House over e-books. This should also be interesting…



In Syracuse, there’s a library in a telephone booth. It’s true! On the other side of the spectrum, the Internet Archives is gathering thousands of books for a physical repository.



And lastly, a Kickstarter project delves into the intriguing concept of “text morphing.”

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

I’d just seen a headline about this discovery of five hundred “lost” fairy tales when Julie sent me a link to the full story. My readers, they’re psychic! And awesome!




For those of you in the United Kingdom, the Newcastle Science Fest looks amazing, as does the London Drinker Beer & Cider Festival, and both events are going on this weekend. (The logo for the latter is fantastic. I want a t-shirt!)



Meanwhile, over here in the U.S., we are featuring an ostrich festival. Hey, why not?

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

If you had the chance to rename the phonograph, what would you call it? A list of alternatives considered by Thomas Edison includes some gems, such as “anitphone” (“back talker”). I think he chose pretty wisely.




Sherlock Holmes is alive and well in several incarnations these days, huzzah!



Sure, you may have refrigerator magnets. You may even have refrigerator poetry magnets. But do you have the Magneto Versalator Steampunk Magnetic Word Set?



And, if you have a few extra thousand lying around the domicile, you could bid on the steampunk mechanical arm worn by Nathan Fillion in an episode of Castle. (Thanks to Aaron of Conceptopolis for the link!)

Monday, March 05, 2012

Tomorrow would be Robert Johnson’s 100th birthday. Celebrate the blues!




Wislawa Szymborska’s will allows for the creation of a literary prize and a foundation for her work.



Are “so bad they’re good” movies endangered? (To this I say, not likely. At MCT headquarters, we see new ones all the time!)



Stanley Kubrick kept a running list of titles in search of scripts. Many of these would-be movies would fall into the abovementioned “so bad they’re good” category, I think.



I may have mentioned UX on here before. They’re continuing to do incredible stuff in the French underground (literally).

Friday, March 02, 2012

Happy Friday! We are dodging tornado warnings here at the moment. Fun times. At any rate, it’s time for a very special Links From Others post – all links are courtesy of my partner in crime, Bunny/Brian/Butch R. Cleaver/the voice of Sir Reginald. Take it away!




-- A monkey controls a robot hand. Let’s hear it for science!



-- LED wallpaper! What more needs be said?



-- Good stuff from the Retroist: A short video interview with the voice of Admiral Akbar, plus a podcast on ‘80s TV show Manimal. (I liked Manimal, I don’t care what anyone says. Thanks to Bunny for humoring me!)



-- An “urban field guide to subcultural tribes,” also known as Your Scene Sucks.



-- A woman furnished her Sydney house in 1964 and hasn’t done much to it sense. Now it’s for sale as a virtual time capsule! Awesome!



Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you next week!

Thursday, March 01, 2012

How many of Scholastic’s 100 books for children have you read? I’ve only read 28 (although, to be fair, a lot of the books on the list are recent publications).




Romenesko’s “The Promise of Teletext” is a great read, especially for those of us who cut our teeth in journalism or computing. And, in somewhat related happenings, “Starring the Computer” documents each appearance of an actual computer in television or film back to 1950.



How many wacky words do journalists use regularly in stories? Words which you never use in regular conversation? Lots, probably.



And speaking of wacky, imagine being a Puritan child saddled with a name like Wrestling. Or Abstinence. Or Creature. (Creature?!?)